Abou-Merhi Lines

Editorial illustration: Abou-Merhi Lines

Original editorial illustration of a generic cargo ship and corporate files; no specific vessel or route is depicted.

Abou-Merhi Lines SAL is a Lebanese shipping company identified in U.S. Treasury records as part of Merhi Ali Abou Merhi’s business group. It was designated on 1 October 2015 in an action alleging that his vessels carried used vehicles for Ayman Joumaa’s organization. The Office of Foreign Assets Control removed the company on 9 May 2017. Vessel listings had separate timelines, including removal of City of Tokyo on 4 April 2016.

Identity and corporate relationships

OFAC’s October 2015 entry listed several spelling variants of Abou-Merhi Lines SAL and linked the company to Merhi and Abou Merhi Group. It supplied Beirut addresses for identification. The Treasury announcement separately described the Group as a holding company and the line as its Lebanese shipping business. The owner, holding company and shipping line were separate targets in the notice. The dated notice is also not a current corporate register. It describes the relationships used in that administrative action, leaving subsequent ownership changes and the company’s present operating arrangements outside the scope of this historical entry.

The Group’s named maritime subsidiaries included companies in Cotonou, Nigeria and Hamburg. The OFAC entries identified the Nigerian operation with Lagos and the German operation with Hamburg, while Treasury described the wider structure as extending across Africa, the Middle East and Europe. This supports a concrete account of the commercial network surrounding the Lebanese line. It does not establish that the line itself owned every foreign subsidiary or performed every service supplied by the Group. The distinction between affiliated companies becomes especially important when a financial investigation describes a route through multiple ports and countries: corporate presence and a proven individual shipment are different kinds of evidence.

Named management roles

Treasury named Houeda Ahmad Nasreddine, Ahmad El Bezri, Wajdi Youssef Nasr, Hana Merhi Abou Merhi and Atef Merhi Abou Merhi for management roles across Merhi’s companies. The group’s foreign shipping subsidiaries included businesses in Benin, Nigeria and Germany. These broad management descriptions should not be read as assigning all five people to Abou-Merhi Lines itself or to a particular vessel or voyage.

The five identified vessels

The original action identified City of Antwerp, City of Lutece, City of Misurata, City of Tokyo and Orient Queen II. Treasury described ownership involving Merhi, the Group and Abou-Merhi Lines, while the detailed vessel entries linked them to Merhi and the line. Those records identify a set of assets affected by the action. They do not assign each vessel an itemized Joumaa transaction. The public description of used-vehicle services was made at the level of Merhi’s maritime business. A reference account can list the ships and the attributed relationships without claiming that every vessel carried the same cargo, earned the same fee or participated in a separately documented laundering episode.

The OFAC entries included International Maritime Organization identifiers as well as ship names. City of Misurata was identified as IMO 7920857, and City of Tokyo as IMO 8709145. Such identifiers allow the historical record to be followed when a ship’s name or registration details change. In November 2015, OFAC updated City of Tokyo’s flag from Liberia to Panama and changed the call sign while retaining the narcotics-sanctions tag. That notice was an amendment of the entry, not a removal.

The April 2016 vessel removal

On 4 April 2016, OFAC included City of Tokyo among deletions from its sanctions list, using the same IMO identifier. The removal occurred more than a year before the line’s own deletion. It explains why the May 2017 notice lists the other named vessels but does not repeat City of Tokyo as a new deletion. The April action did not remove Abou-Merhi Lines or Merhi personally. Its effect was specific to the entries it named. A fleet-level account that assigns all five ships the company’s May 2017 removal date would therefore compress distinct administrative histories and lose a documented intermediate development.

Treasury alleged that Merhi’s vessels supplied used-vehicle transport to Joumaa’s organization and that the wider network’s money-laundering activity benefited Hezbollah. The role attributed to the shipping business was a logistics service. The announcement did not establish that the line physically shipped cocaine or that Hezbollah owned or commanded it. Nor did it publish a particular company invoice that could be traced from freight charges into an organizational payment. Treasury identified the shipping company as a service provider to the named network. The evidence should be described at that level, preserving the difference between moving commercial cargo and identifying the ultimate destination of a customer’s funds.

Cars within the financial circuit

The LCB amended civil complaint described money sent from Lebanon to the United States for used-car purchases, shipment and sale of the vehicles in West Africa, and movements of sale proceeds toward Lebanon together with narcotics and other criminal proceeds. This explains how genuine merchandise could form a stage in an alleged money-laundering circuit. A transport service joined the vehicle markets, while banks, exchange houses and cash handlers performed other functions. The complaint supplies the financial context for the later maritime allegation. It does not, by itself, identify a particular Abou-Merhi Lines voyage or establish the knowledge of the captain, crew or shore-side employees involved in it.

The car-purchase transfers described in the LCB case were measured across financial institutions, not allocated as revenue to the shipping line. Likewise, the bank’s $102 million settlement was a resolution of claims against LCB and its assets. It was not a damages award against Abou-Merhi Lines. These categories matter when the shipping company is discussed beside a large laundering estimate: the value paid for cars, their resale proceeds, a carrier’s freight charge and a bank settlement measure different things. The reviewed sources do not provide a company-specific reconciliation between those amounts. They support a description of the alleged transport function without assigning the entire financial circuit to one carrier.

The bank’s response

The $102 million LCB settlement preserved the bank’s denial of the allegations. That response is part of the wider financial case invoked to explain the used-car circuit. The bank settlement did not establish Abou-Merhi Lines’ knowledge of a customer’s funds or a payment by the line to Hezbollah.

Research on trade and payments

Research by Matthew Levitt described the bank-transfer, vehicle-sale and proceeds-return mechanism in the wider Joumaa-related record. GAO and BAFT examined trade-based laundering more generally, including the limits of visibility into a transaction when an institution sees only one part of the payment or goods movement. These sources help explain why actual vehicles and ordinary transport contracts can appear in an illicit-finance investigation. They do not independently establish misconduct by this shipping line. Their analytical contribution is the separation of commercial goods, financing and settlement, while the company-specific allegations and administrative dates come from the Treasury and OFAC records.

Goods movement and settlement

Noam Binstok, Orna Mizrahi and Esteban Klor’s May 2026 INSS analysis describes financial settlement through money changers, goods and hawala offsets. This distinction explains why the movement of vehicles and the return of equivalent value can involve different businesses. Their analysis provides context for the alleged used-car circuit. It does not identify a particular Abou-Merhi Lines shipment, freight payment or narcotics cargo.

Contested clearance report

Executive reported in March 2016 on a claim, circulated through Lebanon’s National News Agency, that Merhi had already been cleared. Journalist Jeremy Arbid sought responses from American officials. Treasury said the designations remained in place, and a Justice Department spokesman disputed the report; the NNA maintained its account. The dispute is part of the public history because it preceded the actual removal of the listings. It should not be treated as a court judgment. At that stage, a reported clearance claim and the American administrative record pointed in different directions. The subsequent 2017 notices provide a documented change that is distinct from the contested 2016 account.

Company removal in May 2017

OFAC’s 9 May 2017 notice deleted Abou-Merhi Lines SAL and its listed aliases, alongside Merhi, Abou Merhi Group and other specified related entries. City of Antwerp, City of Lutece, City of Misurata and Orient Queen II were also identified among the deletions. The notice did not give a case-specific reason for the changes or publish a criminal adjudication of the original allegations. The removal is nevertheless a material outcome that must accompany the historical designation. It prevents the October 2015 announcement from being presented as an unqualified account of continuing restrictions and distinguishes the later company action from the earlier City of Tokyo deletion.

L’Orient Today’s 2020 investigation followed City of Misurata through the names Sham 1 and Bana and examined later corporate records. It reported Merhi’s comments about selling ships after the American sanctions and regarding himself as cleared, and discussed subsequent ownership questions. The vessel’s later arms-shipping history concerned other events and cannot prove an earlier Joumaa-related transaction. A ship can retain its physical identity while its owner, operator, charterer or cargo changes. The report’s March 2017 date for Merhi’s personal delisting also differs from the May date established by OFAC. This entry uses the original notices for the sanctions chronology and treats the reported later commercial history separately.

Company, vessel and personnel

The 2015 action distinguished the company, its vessels and managers in the wider group. Those relationships describe the maritime structure through which Treasury alleged transport services were supplied. The full charter, cargo and payment records were not obtained, and no criminal judgment against every manager, crew member or related company is established. Responsibility remains individual even where commercial operations are connected.

Historical significance

The line’s alleged function was to carry the vehicles joining separate commercial markets. Other participants handled purchase funds, sales and settlement. Treasury’s action identified the company and vessels within that transport structure; subsequent notices removed City of Tokyo in April 2016 and the line and specified remaining entries in May 2017. The case describes an alleged logistics service followed by administrative changes, not a finding that the line shipped drugs or directly paid Hezbollah.

See also

• Hezbollah Business Affairs Component
• Lebanese Canadian Bank

References

Legal and sanctions status as of 11 September 2026.